As part of Black History Month, we remember the 1964 boycott of the Cleveland schools to protest segregation.

On April 20, 1964, an estimated 60,000 black children stayed away from district schools in a boycott organized by a group of ministers and civil rights activists known as the United Freedom Movement. That represented about 85 percent of black students in a district that then had more than 150,000 students overall.

Between 35,000 and 45,000 boycotting students -- roughly the size of the entire district today -- attended special schools set up by the UFM that day in churches, homes and community centers. They received lessons on the achievements of black people in government and the arts and lessons on the importance of education, all taught by volunteer housewives, social workers and former teachers from other districts.

"A loud voice representing hundreds of thousands of Cleveland citizens today shouted, 'Segregated schools in Cleveland must go,'" UFM coordinator Harold Williams told The Plain Dealer at the end of that day.

The UFM's most immediate complaint may strike many as odd today: the district's plan to build new schools in black neighborhoods. But the group viewed that as a way to keep schools segregated.

The district ran neighborhood schools, so segregated neighborhoods had segregated schools. In some cases, black students at overcrowded schools were bused to other neighborhoods. That drew complaints and led to voters approving a school construction program in 1962.

The UFM protested construction of the new schools since that would prevent busing and integration, according to Plain Dealer accounts.

Two weeks before the boycott, the Rev. Bruce Klunder, a Presbyterian minister, had been killed when he tried to block a bulldozer with his body at a school construction site in Glenville.

Because of these and other protests, the school board agreed to bus black students to promote integration, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. But the disputes over busing and integration led to federal court oversight of the district, which did not end until the 1990s.